More on Zimbabwe

While the world was busy looking at Zimbabwe's "urban renewal program" (see my previous post here), Robert Mugabe was busy throwing out the remaining white farmers (full story here).

ZimOnline, an apparent news service in South Africa, gives some of the applicable statistics:

Food production has plummeted by 60 percent since the farm evictions began five years ago and only food handouts from international relief agencies have saved Zimbabwe from famine. Zimbabwe requires 1.2 million tonnes of food aid between now and the next harvest around March/April 2006 or about a quarter of the country’s 12 million people could starve.

Mugabe blames erratic rains and economic sabotage by western governments opposed to his farm seizures for crippling Zimbabwe’s mainstay agricultural sector and economy.

But critics say failure by Mugabe to supply black peasant families resettled on former white farms with skills training, financial resources and other inputs is largely to blame for the massive drop in food production.

What's worse is that the continuing evictions of white farmers is going to cause problems for Zimbabwe's winter wheat harvest.

Between the farm evictions and the urban clean-up, Zimbabwe's economy is in the tank.

Zimbabwe is grappling its worst economic crisis in years with shortages of hard cash, fuel, and food. Inflation stands at 144.4 percent and is rising while unemployment is pegged at over 70 percent after hundreds of companies closed down because of the worsening economic climate.

Thousands others, who had gone into informal trading that contributed a third of the country’s Gross Domestic Product, have in one single swoop lost critical income after their businesses were closed by the police under the ongoing urban clean-up campaign.

I see the articles about Zimbabwe in WorldNetDaily, which is generally a conservative news source with more of an eye for international news than the major news sources have. But the mainstream media isn't talking much about Zimbabwe. And that may be because Americans usually don't pay much attention to places outside of North America and the countries where our military is deployed.

Sooner or later, though, we'll hear about Zimbabwe the same way we heard about Ethiopia in the '70s and '80s (and will probably be hearing about Ethiopia again too--stories here and here). But we won't hear about it until Mugabe's policies have utterly destroyed the country and there's nothing left for that country to do but beg for handouts. And we'll send them, because that's who we are.

I get discouraged reading about Zimbabwe's decline and knowing that the UN is more wrapped up in saving Kofi Annan's butt than in doing what it was formed to do: prevent disaster before it's too late.

Update:

Blogger Sokwanele has a fine post on the excuses used by non-Zimbabweans to avoid doing anything about the situation there.

Zimpundit names Zimbabwe's worst enemy. A must-read.